The nuclear industry received a 1979 award for renaming explosions as energetic disassembly

Evidence

The National Council of Teachers of English bestowed its 1979 Doublespeak Award on the nuclear power industry for devising a unique lexicon for sanitizing nuclear mishaps. An explosion became an “energetic disassembly,” a fire became “rapid oxidation,” a reactor accident was a “normal aberration” or a “plant transferent,” and plutonium contamination was dubbed “infiltra-tion” or “plutonium has taken up residence” (National Council of Teachers of English, n. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2687

Categorization

• CANDY: The Doublespeak Award and ‘energetic disassembly’ is a fun, tweetable example of euphemism run amok.
• SHARE: Worth sending to someone interested in linguistic manipulation or the linguistics of euphemism.